Information from Research in Motion
The article "Is BlackBerry a ticking time bomb?" by Peter Scheffel, BBD was forwarded to Research In Motion and the following response was received.
Research In Motion (RIM), the company behind the BlackBerry solution, has a strong base of revenues, customers and products to build on for a future as a major competitor in the mobility market.
We have, however, recognised that the market is changing, so we are looking at ways to strengthen our competitive position. Our new management team, led by CEO Thorsten Heins, has significant industry and operational experience to drive the next generation BlackBerry.
As announced at the end of May 2012, we have engaged J.P. Morgan and RBC to assist the company and the board of directors in reviewing RIM's business and financial performance.
We are working with these advisors on our strategic review and are actively evaluating ways to better leverage our assets and build on our strengths, including our growing BlackBerry subscriber base, our large enterprise installed base, our unique network architecture and our industry-leading security capabilities.
RIM is a financially stable company that is in a strong position to enhance its product portfolio, invest in its core network infrastructure and grow its subscriber base into the future. We currently have $2,2-billion in cash, a $500- million credit facility, and no debt - enough money to meet our needs.
With a range of plans to boost operational efficiency as well as a healthy pipeline of new products and services, RIM is making changes and looking at new opportunities for our business.
Following the launch of a $1-billion initiative to improve efficiency and drive operational savings, RIM's financial position is expected to become even healthier within the months to come.
We will improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of RIM's operations over the next financial year, and we will keep evaluating our operations to ensure that we make any further changes that are necessary.
We are in a transition period before the launch of BlackBerry 10 which is our next generation platform that will regenerate our hardware business, especially at the high end of the market.
This platform is gaining massive traction with application developers and content partners following the successful BlackBerry Jam sessions that we have held around the world since the beginning of May 2012.
Similarly, the reception of the BlackBerry 10 platform by our key carrier partners has been very positive.
Although we are clearly excited about BlackBerry 10, we are not abandoning BlackBerry 7, which will become the first device of choice for feature-phone users choosing their first smartphones.
Current BlackBerry 7 devices have found strong market acceptance. They already offer customers benefits such as a high resolution display, a powerful processor, superior web browsing and cutting-edge technologies such as near field communications.
RIM will keep building on our core strengths in targeted consumer segments as well as in the enterprise market. More than 90% of the Fortune 500 are RIM customers, as well as countless government agencies.
This is because of the faith they have put in our secure smartphone platform - one of the most trusted enterprise infrastructures in the world. RIM will continue to ensure that BlackBerry devices support a range of enterprise applications, are easy for the IT department to manage and can be easily integrated into any enterprise infrastructure to make them attractive for mobile enterprises.
RIM will also keep investing in new offerings such as cloud services for small businesses (BlackBerry Management Center) and enterprises (BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365) and the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion for multi-platform mobile device management.
We are acutely aware of how competitive the smartphone market is at the moment, but we believe that the actions we are taking are positioning RIM for long term success that builds on our great history. The BlackBerry brand still has a powerful position in the global smartphone market, despite growing competition.
RIM has 78-million BlackBerry subscribers in 175 countries and 56-million BBM users around the world, numbers that are growing quarter on quarter as the BlackBerry brand continues to grow market share in the emerging markets.
RIM is a leading player in Africa, Asia and Latin America, parts of the world that are the engines of growth for the global mobile industry.
Today, RIM holds the number one smartphone position in many markets around the world, including South Africa1, Nigeria1, Indonesia1, Colombia1, Venezuela2, Ecuador2, Peru2, Caribbean2, Mexico2 and Central America.
